Many products have primary, and now secondary one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) barcodes that contain useful information. Reading multiple barcodes has become a common problem for handheld scanners. In some cases, the user attempts to manage the acquisition of information by aiming the handheld scanner at individual codes, one at a time.
However, some scanners, such as the all-imaging bi-optic scanners, are now able to read both 1D and 2D barcodes, including multiple barcodes, simultaneously. In this case, the user has no control over which barcodes are read by the scanner. For example, when the scanner beeps, the user does not know which barcode (primary or secondary) caused the beep. The problem becomes: how can this type of barcode scanner capture secondary barcodes when desired, while simultaneously suppressing the read of others—without compromising read performance?